Alan Schoen

Alan Hugh Schoen (December 11, 1924 – July 26, 2023) was an American physicist and computer scientist best known for his discovery of the gyroid, an infinitely connected triply periodic minimal surface.

In August 1985, he moved to the SIUC campus in Nakajo, Japan, where he taught a course in computer science and also helped to teach English at a local Japanese junior high school.

[citation needed] Upon his return to Carbondale in 1988, he taught FORTRAN and Digital Design in the Electrical Engineering Department at SIUC until his retirement in 1995.

After retiring from academia he continued his work on numerous infinite families of minimal surfaces and on inventing geometric puzzles and images.

[10][11][12] Earlier in his career, while conducting his doctoral research on atomic diffusion in solids (1957), Schoen discovered that for self-diffusion in crystalline solids, there is a simple relation between the Bardeen-Hering correlation factor and the isotope effect that makes it possible to distinguish between vacancy and interstitial diffusion mechanisms.

[14] Schoen's preoccupation with this subject eventually led him to an interest in minimal surfaces and the discovery of the gyroid.

[1] Schoen also published scientific papers on families of minimal surfaces, and books on geometric images and puzzles.

[17] He also developed The Geometry Garret, a website full of different families of geometric structures (considered "cool stuff" by Alan's academic colleagues).